Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous, Part 3

[ShadySands]

Doing a quick lich arcanist run before going and finishing my devil run where I'm at the Threshold but in no hurry to complete it. In that one

I kicked Cheliax to the curb and killed the general and queen. I couldn't fight Meph but I tried several different combinations and he seems happy with every resolution.

[Gromnir]

55 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Doing a quick lich arcanist run before going and finishing my devil run where I'm at the Threshold but in no hurry to complete it. In that one

  Reveal hidden contents

I kicked Cheliax to the curb and killed the general and queen. I couldn't fight Meph but I tried several different combinations and he seems happy with every resolution.

 

Spoiler

am weak enough to admit that if mephistopheles were the mother teresa o' golarion, working tireless to help the refugees o' mendev and caring personal for those most in need o' food, housing, medicine or offering the simple and gracious act o' sitting at the bedside o' those beyond hope, we would still try and find a way to kill him just to get his robes.

is a crpg. sue us.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited February 16, 2022 by Gromnir

[Agiel]

1 hour ago, Gromnir said:

  Hide contents

am weak enough to admit that if mephistopheles were the mother teresa o' golarion, working tireless to help the refugees o' mendev and caring personal for those most in need o' food, housing, medicine or offering the simple and gracious act o' sitting at the bedside o' those beyond hope, we would still try and find a way to kill him just to get his robes.

is a crpg. sue us.

HA! Good Fun!

Could put up with a certain backer quest in the Kingmaker cRPG, because prior to hitting level 20 who willingly passes up a decent chunk of EXP?

[Gromnir]

with the dlc delayed, am s'posing we might try and level-up an order of ****atrice __________ cavalier to eventual go legend. were thinking o' doing a 50/50 split with skald. get 1 mythic ability and one mythic feat, so... ever ready and improved critical mythic? kinda wanna find a way to get abundant casting. hmmm.

gendarme were initial our tentative choice for the cavalier but as am planning on going legend it might make sense to go with beast rider as am gonna have an abundance o' feats when all is said and done. might also be better to go sohei for second class so as to not need be concerned 'bout spell casting shortfalls. however, in that case am perhaps wondering if more than 11 levels o' sohei is worth the trouble.  finish off with demonslayer?

regardless, as is no patch yet and the dlc is a couple weeks away, we may start the cavalier in earnest.

edit:

well, so much for simple.  our 50/50 legend build is now looking like a 5/11/8/16 demonslayer/sohei/gendarme/vivisectionist? gets us a dog and +4 v. demons with the ranger, plus the flurry with polearms and all the best mounted feats for the monk. gendarme does provide a few extra feats and the level 8 c0ckatrice feature involving attacks o' opportunity, which we want 'cause am gonna be using a reach weapon. 16 levels o' vivi provides grand mutagen, big sneak attack damage and a few other perks including limited but useful spell casting. 

was thinking o' making female and naming brie gruyère.

HA! Good Fun!

 

Edited February 18, 2022 by Gromnir

[xzar_monty]

I rarely check individual attack or damage rolls in the combat log, but since I just dealt an odd number of damage on a crit, I decided to see what's going on. And this is what the log says:

1d6+12 (x2) = 27 Piercing.

So how is that possible?

[majestic]

16 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

So how is that possible?

Working as intended. The game doesn't calculate (1d6 + 12) * 2 but rather 2d6 + 24 (or 1d6 + 12 + 1d6 + 12, if you want), as per Pathfinder rules. That was a pretty bad set of damage rolls.

Edited February 20, 2022 by majestic

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Planning on going on a Trickster run built around crit abuse. Azata was fun, but honestly it felt like Aivu's interruptions took the place of the mythic options I saw pop up in dialogue. And it really fell off in the last act.

[xzar_monty]

30 minutes ago, majestic said:

Working as intended. The game doesn't calculate (1d6 + 12) * 2 but rather 2d6 + 24 (or 1d6 + 12 + 1d6 + 12, if you want), as per Pathfinder rules. That was a pretty bad set of damage rolls.

Ok, thanks! Then the display is wrong, as it clearly implies a calculation, doesn't it? Once you know, you can read it right (in the way you describe), but you have to know it first.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

3 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Ok, thanks! Then the display is wrong, as it clearly implies a calculation, doesn't it? Once you know, you can read it right (in the way you describe), but you have to know it first.

It's not wrong so much as it is unintuitive. Technically you are multiplying, you're just multiplying the roll rather than the result.

[majestic]

6 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

Ok, thanks! Then the display is wrong, as it clearly implies a calculation, doesn't it? Once you know, you can read it right (in the way you describe), but you have to know it first.

There are a lot of things that are wrong. Half the tutorials are just lies, the little floating texts that show you the d20 rolls are mostly fine for attacks, but utterly bonkers for saving throws, the game tells you your sneak dice can't exceed half your level while it's possible to stack them to 15d6, and a whole lot of other things.

Then there are the really fun bugs, for instance the Mounted Shield feat that allows you to add your shield bonus to your mount's armor class. You'd think that would only work when you're actually wearing said shield, right? Well, no. The game calculates the armor class bonus when you mount up, you can just switch to a two hander afterwards and the AC of your mount doesn't change back. It does pay off to get Tower Shield proficiency on characters that ride mounts into combat, especially if you can dip into some class with bonus feats that's not too far off your planned progression.

[bugarup]

Traipsing about Chapter 3. "Hey kids, can you take care of those pesky giants? Your friendly neighbourhood lich is busy hellfiring the one true danger - The Tick Swarm!

Seriously, what is it without Owlcat and swarms? Did one of them poke a wasp nest as a kid and carried encounter trauma all the way into professional life?

Also, what is a good level to tackle that dragon with a lich on daring difficulty? Her ambushing me is getting really annoying.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

20 minutes ago, bugarup said:

Seriously, what is it without Owlcat and swarms? Did one of them poke a wasp nest as a kid and carried encounter trauma all the way into professional life?

Given one of the mythic paths is THE SWARM, I think the obsession may be something other than fear.

[xzar_monty]

Btw, whoever designed the random wilderness encounters in this game should be... forced to wear a dunce cap. Sorry, I almost got nasty there and then decided not to.

I mean, heck, how broken can they be? Every single one of them. I just ran into a group of Ash Giants. These huge things. And I encountered them in such a way that I by the time the encounter started, I was surrounded by them. How is that supposed to be able to happen? I mean, some of the folks in my group are really very good at Perception, and every one of them at least has eyes. How is it possible for a group of GIANTS to get to surround you without you noticing?

It's so bad that every time I get a random encounter, I just save-scum. I don't like it, but the design is so poor.

Anyone got similar feelings about this?

[majestic]

You haven't lived until you walk about the map on Unfair difficulty, something spawns next to your backline and does back to back 120 damage crits to your casters. Can't say the game doesn't keep me on the edge of my seat though. Any encounter on Unfair is over when it is over, not before.

[Gromnir]

6 hours ago, bugarup said:

Traipsing about Chapter 3. "Hey kids, can you take care of those pesky giants? Your friendly neighbourhood lich is busy hellfiring the one true danger - The Tick Swarm!

Seriously, what is it without Owlcat and swarms? Did one of them poke a wasp nest as a kid and carried encounter trauma all the way into professional life?

Also, what is a good level to tackle that dragon with a lich on daring difficulty? Her ambushing me is getting really annoying.

deskari is the lord of locusts, so swarms were kinda a given. the original pnp adventure path were ugly with swarms.

for wotr there is a ring (bane of spirit, relic) that allows you to transform all o' a target party member's damage to force damage, which is a nice way to give at least one of your combatants something to do when fighting swarms. also, the devouring lust metamagic rod is gonna be an effective tool for eliminating pesky swarms. demons is vulnerable to unholy damage, and the rod converts up to six o' your spells per rest to maximized unholy damage. demonic swarms is  as vulnerable to unholy damage as is demons. a couple devouring lust altered controlled fireballs is the end o' most mid-level swarms. stormbolts is a superior swarm killer, and with a lich we assume you got stormbolts, but such may not be the case.

the swarm cheese works to your advantage as well, though it does feel like it is exploitive if you have camellia or daeran spamming creeping doom backed by mark of justice to destroy bosses who cannot target your swarms. 

as to the dragon...

Spoiler

is only gonna be a couple ambushes and then you get a chance to do unto dragons as they would do unto you. however, as to surviving the ambushes am gonna recommend tb and spread your party out to minimize the hurt and/or cast protection/resist fire if possible before you get toasted. the dragon is subject to intimidation, so if you get a chance to act before the lizard does, and if you got a thug in your party, is not much o' a problem.

is two two ambushes which should be brief, but is possible that sans spamming reloads to ensure you win initiative and raise your fire protection before the breath weapon hits, you may lose party members, so have a few raise dead scrolls on hand. 

our cavalier, who hasn't quite gained a cavalier level, is roll stomping through a hard run.  we got zero desire to play an entire unfair playthrough for reasons already mentioned, but we do push the difficulty up for most boss battles. is no non-boss character who survives a charge attack from our polearm wielding almost cavalier. achievements is a non issue for us, but we were early in our new mounted combat run when we were managing the masterful charge achievement. the thing is, am getting one or two charges at most during a combat encounter, which makes us think the return on investment for charge is not great... although most battles start with us initiating a charge, so is perhaps worth the cost. regardless, am more focused on increasing our attacks and exploiting attacks of opportunity. 

sosiel always gives us the most trouble in tb mounted combat resulting in wasted charges or stalled mounted attacks. tb mounted combat remains a bit buggy. am suspecting our sosiel problem is 'cause his initiative is not great and he typical acts after there is already a mass o' other mounted characters in the same location-- the engine appears to have difficulty with our army o' critters. am considering respec'ng him out o' the animal domain. 'tween nenio and our merc we got plenty o' haste, so our oversized sosiel should be in the thick o' combat almost immediately.  

we did add a mercenary skald to our party, 'cause we serious want a skald and only seelah makes much sense for going skald, but is no way am sacrificing her mark of justice. 'tween the beast totem and animal fury rage powhaz, am getting three extra natural attacks and as such lann's celestial velociraptor has become even more o' an ambulatory buzz saw. perpetual smites + crusader's edge+ instrument of freedom+ claws of the sacred beast = dead everything. being able to cast personal buffs from scrolls is also kinda cheesy, so shield and divine favour at mid levels is no brainers. later is gonna be transformation and ice body. the skald's spell list is not expansive, but it includes most o' the buffs we would want. 

we took one level o' oracle for seelah to get a wolf and some early extra heals + remove fear, but we shoulda' gone with beast rider cavalier; woulda' kept her bab full. 

hopeful we get the patch update this week. for thematic reasons, we kinda want an aeon or former aeon/legend for the dlc. am current at mythic level 7 with our aeon and our anticipated legend is catching up quicker than we anticipated. 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited February 21, 2022 by Gromnir

[Gromnir]

odd question. after you face the champion in the battlebliss, you may continue to fight in the arena. am curious if your opponents ever change or if it is a turtles all the way down situation... albeit not turtles but deathsnatchers. was wondering if anybody had tested to see if compulsive arena fighting led to something other than a torturously inefficient experience grind. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Vaeliorin]

I think I found a weird bug, but I don't know if it's mod related, so if someone with a vanilla version of the game could check I'd appreciate it (I'd pull my mods and try it myself, but I don't have a save that's late enough game to try it.) 

I was messing around with a nature mage (arcanist archetype) eldritch knight trickster (I though having full druid/wizard spellbooks both based on int would be interesting to play around with), but when I started taking eldritch knight levels...it started me over with level 1 spells and I ended up with 2 arcanist spellbooks.  So if somebody has a vanilla late game save where they could try it with a merc and see if the same thing happens, I'd appreciate it (I'd report it as a bug, but my game is modded, so...)  Technically it's 2 arcane enforcer (slayer) 8 nature mage (arcanist) 10 eldritch knight.  I don't know if the arcane enforcer matters, but...best to be thorough.

I've been playing around with builds (I've got a oracle/angel run going and I haven't for the life of me been able to figure out what to do with Ember...I like hexes, but have no use for a non-arcane trickster blaster) and I rather like the idea of a trickster sword saint.  Getting all the crazy crit feats plus a full wizard spellbook to back you up seems like it could be pretty good.  With mythic spell combat (from tabletop tweaks) you can even use the wizard (and trickster) spellbooks for spell combat.  Sadly, spell combat with wands doesn't seem to work (at least it didn't seem to in my tests) because a wand of shocking grasp to use every round would be pretty sweet.

Trying to figure out something that would really benefit from gold dragon as well.  I kind of think shaman (a melee shaman needs 4 stats, Str/Dex/Wis/Cha so the instant 18 to all stats would be really useful) but I hate the shaman spellbook.  Had we favored class bonuses that I could use to grab some cleric spells for a shaman (as I did in Kingmaker) I actually rather like them, but without that the shaman spellbook I find rather lackluster.

Edited February 22, 2022 by Vaeliorin

[majestic]

33 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

(I've got a oracle/angel run going and I haven't for the life of me been able to figure out what to do with Ember...I like hexes, but have no use for a non-arcane trickster blaster)

Even if you do nothing else with her, the Fortune/Protective Luck Hex/Cackle, uhm, synergy (call it an exploit if you must) alone is worth having Ember in the party, but if you don't want her to spam Red Salamander based Hellfire Rays with triple enhanced dice rolls just cause she won't Trickster about (your loss ) you can just slap every Conjuration focus on her and all the summoning feats and mythic abilities and call it a day. 

Expanded Arsenal: Enchantment rounds it out. Ember becomes a mobile front-line and a crowd control expert. Not that you need either as Angel Oracle, but since you don't want her to pew pew fire and brimstone, that'll work.

However, it's technically not impossible to make her an Arcane Trickster. Core would be 8 levels of Witch, one level of Vivisectionist to get the sneak attack with Accomplished Sneak Attacker, one Cross-Blooded Sorcerer level with Brass and Gold dragon bloodlines, then Second Bloodline: Red plus Ascendet Element: Fire. Get Red Salamander, Ring of the Pyromaniac and eventually Deadly Rays. Turn everything into cinders. Works decently enough if you know where to find gear for her and don't mind shelling out the big bucks relatively early.

Not worth it unless you have another source of hexes, but she'll deal enough damage even against enemies with sneak attack immunity.

Edited February 22, 2022 by majestic

[Gromnir]

2 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

 

I've been playing around with builds (I've got a oracle/angel run going and I haven't for the life of me been able to figure out what to do with Ember...I like hexes, but have no use for a non-arcane trickster blaster) and I rather like the idea of a trickster sword saint.  Getting all the crazy crit feats plus a full wizard spellbook to back you up seems like it could be pretty good.  With mythic spell combat (from tabletop tweaks) you can even use the wizard (and trickster) spellbooks for spell combat.  Sadly, spell combat with wands doesn't seem to work (at least it didn't seem to in my tests) because a wand of shocking grasp to use every round would be pretty sweet.

Trying to figure out something that would really benefit from gold dragon as well.  I kind of think shaman (a melee shaman needs 4 stats, Str/Dex/Wis/Cha so the instant 18 to all stats would be really useful) but I hate the shaman spellbook.  

1) so why not make ember an arcane trickster?

am pretty sure with a level o' vivisectionist you may manage arcane trickester by level seven. can add one level o' loremaster to give your self a cheaty trickster feat as well... if you do not mind full exploit mode. 

2) an enchanter ember is quite effective.

as odd as it sounds, lack o' grease is likely the only reason we don't go with an enchanter/conjurer and instead prefer enchanter/evocation. grease may be heightened and is gonna be effective from start o' game 'til the end and if ember is our primary arcane caster we feel handicapped by the absence o' one o' our favorite cc spells. 

is meta, but the game (secretly) throws enchantment boosting gear your direction. is a couple encounters many players do not ever see which result in two 100t drops accounting for +4 to enchantment dc.

Spoiler

blight maw drops a ring and mielarah drops bracers. each item boosts enchantment dc by +2.  

edit: is a whole lotta other enchantment dc boosting gear, but am suspecting the aforementioned is most easily missed.

an enchanter focused ember is gonna potential have unfair boss level o' enchantment dc, though you is still gonna need sosiel to take the madness domain if you wanna do unfair bosses with ember casting mind effect spells.

3) hexes

...

is no question the cackle exploit is, well, an exploit. however, even w/o extending protective luck and fortune for minutes o' duration for your entire party, many debuff hexes don't have saves, or if they do, is only to shorten duration-- makes hexes ideal for boss fights. as much as we loathe camellia, the option to acquire the metal curse likely makes her a better option for curses, but ember is not shabby.

4) the shaman spell books needs to be viewed in the context o' spirits

with mythic feats you may add additional spirits to further expand the shaman spellbook. am s'posing no hellfire ray is a hurdle if you need hellfire. 

regardless, insofar as shaman, do not forget the metal curse we mentioned. the curse is gonna be a superior power upgrade compared to any single spell you might acquire. stone may not be great for spell casting, but metal curse is arguable one o' the better abilities in the game... up there with guarded hearth and madness domain power. we explained in an earlier post how lowering the ac o' a foe is not genuine different than increase party ab. the curse scales and a no-save -6 penalty to ac at level sixteen is still not enough reason for us to keep camellia in a party, but we do experience regrets. 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited February 22, 2022 by Gromnir

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, Vaeliorin said:

I think I found a weird bug, but I don't know if it's mod related, so if someone with a vanilla version of the game could check I'd appreciate it (I'd pull my mods and try it myself, but I don't have a save that's late enough game to try it.) 

If you've got ToyBox, you can disable all mods except for TB and level a new character to 20.

1 hour ago, Vaeliorin said:

I was messing around with a nature mage (arcanist archetype) eldritch knight trickster (I though having full druid/wizard spellbooks both based on int would be interesting to play around with), but when I started taking eldritch knight levels...it started me over with level 1 spells and I ended up with 2 arcanist spellbooks.  So if somebody has a vanilla late game save where they could try it with a merc and see if the same thing happens, I'd appreciate it (I'd report it as a bug, but my game is modded, so...)  Technically it's 2 arcane enforcer (slayer) 8 nature mage (arcanist) 10 eldritch knight.  I don't know if the arcane enforcer matters, but...best to be thorough.

It sounds like the game doesn't account for Nature Mage having a different spellbook than Arcanist in regards to PrCs. If you've got Toybox, check to see if your Arcanist spellbooks are labeled differently. If that's the case, you can fix it by deleting the plain Arcanist spellbook and raising the CL of the Nature one to 18. I doubt Arcane Enforcer matters, but the way it calculates Exploits could be a factor.

2 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

I haven't for the life of me been able to figure out what to do with Ember...I like hexes, but have no use for a non-arcane trickster blaster

Ember is set up to blast the living **** out of enemies with fire rays, even without sneak attack her rays are brutal. Damning souls to Hell doesn't really fit her character, but just pretend she's shooting Heavenfire Rays and bringing salvation through fire. As @majestic said, cackle plus hexes is really powerful to the point your whole team can benefit from rerolls. She also gets off-heals and some powerful enchantment spells, so there's always that if blasting doesn't do it for you.

[Gromnir]

the arcanist bit sounds similar to the known bug which were the feyspeaker not being able to acquire the angel spellbook once such were made available to druids. presumed cause o' the problem were charisma being the casting attribute for feyspeakers as 'posed to wisdom. sounds as if @Vaeliorin is suffering a similar situation with a spellcaster which does not utilize the base class casting attribute... though kinda inverted. nature mages is arcanists and maintain intelligence as their prime attribute, but they got the druid spellbook.

we got limited experience with trickster, so am offering little more advice, but the problem you describe does sound like the aforementioned behavior o' the feyspeaker bug which were not related to mods. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Vaeliorin]

My major issue with making Ember an arcane trickster/blaster is that she doesn't have any good cantrips to use, so she'd be spending most fights twiddling her thumbs once she got the various hexes/cackle going, since I hate casting spells unless I absolutely have to.  Also, I'm making Woljif an arcane trickster, so it'd be doubling up.  But I figured out what I want to do with her.  She's on hexes/buffs/heals/dispel duty.  I turned her into a Cauldron Witch (an archetype that's apparently in the game but wasn't activated), so she's able to hand out alchemical stat boosts to everyone (for class level minutes, 3 + Int mod times per day), which is nice.  She's also better at using potions, so...yay?  I haven't gotten myself in a situation yet where all the hexes are up and I'm just using cackle to keep them running, so I'm not sure what she'll be doing once I encounter that, but I guess she'll be blasting sometimes as well.

As to the shaman spellbook bit...I think it's mostly a playstyle thing.  I like characters that are useful without needing to constantly burn spells (the fact that arcane trickster makes cantrips useful in the only reason I can stand a caster-ish wizard), and the buffs available to shamans are...mediocre at best.  I feel like I'd be better off with a druid or a cleric.  I guess part of my problem with shaman is trying to turn them into a melee, and feeling like a turn spent on a hex is a turn that isn't killing something.  I had the same problem with a shaman I played in Kingmaker, in that I didn't really ever use the hexes, I just took the ones like Iceplant and Battle Master.  Oh, and looking at it again, one of the things that really kills it for me is the lack of the Fluid Magic hex (it lets you use your spirit spells in any of your spell slots.)  It doesn't help that the Wildland Shaman (which I thought was the most interesting) isn't allowed to take Second Spirit.  Although playing around with it more, Shadow Shaman with Stone and Nature spirits would get me improved trip and aspect of the wolf along with 6d6 sneak dice, which is an appealing combo.  Especially since I could theoretically Metal Curse ->Aspect of the Wolf Trip->AoO and get another AoO when they stand up.  Might have to take extend so I can memorize more than one Aspect of the Wolf...but I like it.  Not sure what mythic to go pre-Gold Dragon, but that sounds pretty interesting, assuming late game stuff isn't all immune to tripping.

[bringingyouthefuture]

Couple questions if you all will humor me.  So what's the general consensus on difficulty?  I got through the game on core difficulty with an Azata dual-wielding fighter, mixed in some sneak attack damage, and played with all NPC party, mostly just kept each NPC to thier class which seemed to work the best in terms of bonuses. 

Next question, how is the gaming playing once you get past Drezen and into the

Spoiler

Abyss - is this even a spolier anymore?

When I picked it up it was in a pretty sad state, especially some of the battles where enemies would walk a straight line literally off the maps, not to mention the poor balance.  Still was alright and probably won't go back to the game until all the DLCs release, etc.  but that being said if I never have to fight another demon again in a game I wouldn't be to upset, there was a lot of demons ... is it safe to say the games release felt rushed?  I mean even in terms of story and continuity, but I have a feeling with better balance and bug fixes it will feel more cohesive.

[bugarup]

I'm started to look into metamagic other than selective now when casters are no longer useless. Is there a reason not to heighten a spell if they take the same spell level anyway? Also, if you bolster a single target spell, it starts doing splash damage to friendlies.  Will have to redo spellbooks, but at least that is kind of one-time thing, unlike buffing. 

Stumbled upon some dude called something like Sinewy Sinus while exploring. Took a look at his stats, reloaded, buffbotted, pre-cackled luck and defense hexes. He offed my sacrificial skellington friend and feared two critters, but was fantastically susceptible to hellfire and went down fairly easily in two turns, and the best thing of all - he dropped over 20K of XP that got me to level 11. I really don't get the XP system in this game, like in Chapter 2 where the nasty invulnerable thwarted necromancer gives, like, 5 times less XP than lumbering, easy to disable monstrosity she summons. 

 

...anyway. If you guys know locations of other such XP pinatas in Chapter 3, please do not hesitate to send me their way. 

 

Boldened by that pile of XP I went after the dragon, managed to sneak on her and she was down in the first round, courtesy of Smiteraptor and Greybor (who really hits hard; too bad he tries to cosplay Sergio Leone's bounty hunters so hard, it's kind of funny). Like, her cellar horticulture was almost worse than her. Also XP was real lousy, especially for a dragon, and so was loot. I mean, it's reasonable to expect a dragon to have the hoard, innit? Nope, some piddly trinkets. She really should have taken example from Neverwinter Nigths 2 red dragon, now that was one wealthy lizard. 

 

Back home from the dragon, Daeran took my bony boy on the date. You poor sweet summer child. 

 

 

 

[Gromnir]

36 minutes ago, bugarup said:

Also XP was real lousy, especially for a dragon, and so was loot.

gotta admit, when we first dispatched the dragon, we kept searching the lair for a hidden secret door or something which would show us where the big pile o' dragon gold were to be found so we could at least cover the cost o' paying greyboar. we were wondering why owlcat changed the name o' the act 3 dragon from pnp...

Treasure: The caravan goods Scorizscar has taken lie in 
heaps in the easternmost wing of his cave. Most of these 
are ruined, but if the PCs root about the debris of the 
caravan, they can find salvage worth 18 points of Goods.
The dragon’s actual treasure is mixed in with the 
Goods, and is worth much more. This hoard consists 
of 12,300 cp, 17,450 sp, 4,800 gp, 260 pp, five tourmaline 
gemstones worth 50 gp each, a platinum holy symbol of 
Iomedae in the form of a tiny longsword worth 500 gp, 
a wand of stoneskin with 22 charges, a suit of +4 mithral 
scale mail, a +3 cold iron evil-outsider-bane longsword, a 
belt of dwarvenkind, and a scroll tube trimmed in gold 
worth 250 gp that contains a scroll of restoration, a scroll of 
greater dispel magic, a scroll of heal, a scroll of spell resistance, 
and a bloodstained letter written in a hasty hand. 

 

2 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:

My major issue with making Ember an arcane trickster/blaster is that she doesn't have any good cantrips to use, so she'd be spending most fights twiddling her thumbs once she got the various hexes/cackle going, since I hate casting spells unless I absolutely have to. 

is kinda reversed from how we see ember, as from our pov her hexes give her something useful to contribute when her spellcasting is not being utilized. even w/o abundant casting, an ember blaster is able to cast scorching bolts (low/mid levels) early in the game, and unlike other casters she ain't limited to cantrips and a crossbow to be useful when not casting spells. once she is having those abundant casting feats, ember may cast spells with relative impunity. even so, if you got a blaster you is happy with, then is unlikely you need a second, but ember does have advantages woljif and even nenio has difficulty replicating insofar as being a pure damage dealer. 

shadow shaman is an intriguing archetype 'cause it has so many options. got full divine spell casting, hexes, sneak attack damage and even potential an animal companion, albeit kinda late in the game. am always on the fence 'tween shadow shaman and spirit hunter for a potential main character shaman build 'cause while the spirit hunter lacks the sneak damage, they do have one o' the easiest routes to making just about any weapon elemental barrage viable, 'stead o' feeling like you is handicapping self by not choosing kukri.    

as for gold dragon, am gonna choose lich 'cause is possible to go complete polar opposites by playing dastardly evhul for +90% o' the game, and then sudden choose a gold dragon focused on mercy and redemption. appeals to our sense o' whimsy. not the ideal power build, but will be intriguing even so. 

HA! Good Fun!